1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to agricultural machinery. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus for the harvesting, loading, and transfer of produce.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With the advent of agricultural mechanization, broccoli, cauliflower, and other crops requiring damp growing conditions, have been difficult to harvest. The conditions that promote high yields of these crops --extremely moist soil conditions--exacerbate the harvesting process. Nonstandard cultivation techniques, such as varying row spacings, also reduce the efficiency with which broccoli, cauliflower, et al. can be harvested.
The known and widely practiced technique of harvesting such produce requires that a team of laborers proceed through a field ahead of a harvesting machine cutting the product from the plant on which it grew. A second team of laborers, accompanying a harvest machine, gather the product, and load it onto the harvest machine.
The typical harvest machine may be of a type particularly adapted for working in wet fields where the tires of the machine may sink thirty inches or more into mud when fully loaded. Such machines are most often towed through the field by a team of tractors. Once a harvest machine is loaded to capacity, the machine is towed from the field and the harvest machine used as a highway transport vehicle. The harvest machine is typically unloaded at a cooling facility and then returned to the field for the harvest of another load of produce.
It is known to have had vehicles in the field off-load produce that has been sorted into cartons and palletized. Heretofore, such harvesters have directly discharged to vehicles which travel from the harvesting site in the field to the cooling and shipping facilities and thence to market.
Vehicles which are capable of traveling on the road and in the field are compromise vehicles having deficiencies in the field or on the road. This is especially true where the field is muddy or mired and the vehicle tires are designed for mud and mire, but not for road travel. Typically, the specialized vehicles for making the transit of such fields are too slow for travel over appreciable distances to processing and/or transporting locations. Moreover, where the crop is one that is indigenous to mud, travel of such vehicles on conventional roads without cleaning is often not permitted.
Moreover, the conveyance between the vehicles which are capable of road travel and the harvesting vehicles has consisted of sliding ramps. Typically, the road vehicle is provided with a winch. When the road vehicle is abutted to the harvest vehicle with the ramps spanning the distance therebetween, cargo is pulled by the winch to the road transport vehicles.
Passing pallets stacked 14 cartons high over ramps can result in the load being in part lost. Moreover, utilizing winches requires that the pallet be placed on special fittings to convey the load. In short the apparatus and process of the prior art is ungainly and inadequate where special field conditions such as mud and the like are commonly encountered.